Welcome to Worldwide Weird Holidays, where you’ll find a new reason to celebrate every day of the year.
March 22 is International Talk Like William Shatner Day
Today is International Talk Like William Shatner Day (ITLWSD). In 2009, Maurice LaMarche and Doug VanHorn bumped into each other on Facebook while each was attempting to have March 22nd–Shatner’s birthday—designated as ITLWSD. Though initially sworn enemies locked in a Lazarus-like battle over who’d thought of it first, the men eventually joined forces to promote […]
March 20 is Extraterrestrial Abduction Day
Today is Extraterrestrial Abduction Day. While we have been unable to identify the creator of this holiday, we can report the widespread belief that it was inspired by an Alien Abduction Day festival held on March 20, 2008, in Toronto, Canada. (It was never repeated. Could a mass abduction have caused the festival’s mysterious disappearance?) Here […]
National Corndog Day
National Corndog Day is an unofficial holiday celebrated each year on the first Saturday of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Lauded as a gustatory miracle on par with Jesus’ loaves and fishes, National Corndog Day commemorates the day in 1992 when a box of meat-on-a-stick magically appeared in the freezer of two hungry basketball fans. This eliminated […]
March 18 is Awkward Moments Day
awkward adjective US /ˈɔk·wərd/ 1. difficult to use, do, or deal with: The computer came in a big box that was awkward to carry. 2. causing inconvenience, anxiety, or embarrassment: It was an awkward situation, because the restaurant was too expensive for us but we didn’t want to just get up and walk out. 3. […]
March 17 is St. Patrick’s Day
Today is St. Patrick’s Day, the rare religious holiday that everybody celebrates. Everybody. It’s believed he was born in Roman-ruled Britain in 385 AD. At age sixteen, he was kidnapped by marauders who took him to Ireland and sold him into slavery. Several years later, Patrick had a religious experience in which God told him […]
March 16 is Goddard Day
Today is Goddard Day. On March 16, 1926, scientist Robert Goddard successfully launched the first liquid-fueled rocket. In 1915, he had challenged accepted beliefs about propulsion when he theorized that a rocket could produce thrust in the vacuum of space, where there was no air to push against. He was widely ignored and paid for the […]
March 15 is the Ides of March
Today is the Ides of March, which marks the date in 44 B.C. that Julius Caesar was assassinated. To learn why it was called the Ides of March, we need to take a look at the Roman calendar in use 2,060 years ago. Days of the year weren’t not numbered sequentially. Instead, each month had […]
March 13 is Ear Muff Day
Today is Ear Muff Day, celebrating the date in 1877 when Chester Greenwood was awarded a patent for his “ear-mufflers.” Before long, his hometown of Farmington, Maine became the Earmuff Capital of the World, producing up to 50,000 pairs of Greenwood Champion Ear Protectors each year. One hundred years later, the state of Maine declared December […]
March 9 is Panic Day
Have you ever wondered how the dinosaurs felt? Now’s your chance: It’s Panic Day! (Save a little for International Panic Day on June 18th!)
March 8 is National Proofreading Day
Why wood ewe knead a proofreader wen yew halve spellcheck? Grammar checkers ken ketch mistakes if there obvious wons. It docent make sense too higher sum one fro that. But then again, you’ll never get a second chance to make a first impression. Happy National Proofreading Day!